Call for Participation

Code on the Beach is a non-profit, destination software engineering conference at a beachfront
resort that focuses on intensive education, a family-friendly atmosphere, and fun networking.
We are looking for interesting software engineering, entrepreneurship, and design topics from
a wide array of speakers to make our conference as diverse as possible. This is our public
Call for Participation (CFP), and below is an outline of how our CFP works.

Important Dates

CFP Opens to the Public: Monday, February 26, 2018

CFP Closes: Monday, April 30, 2018

All Proposers Notified By: Friday, May 4, 2018

Content

Topics for Code on the Beach must be in the realm of software/web engineering, software architecture,
general programming, entrepreneurship, leadership, creativity, or UI/UX design. For software topics,
preference is given to content at an intermediate- to advanced-level (300-400 level) as our target
audience consists of mostly seasoned developers. Introductory-level (100-200 level) talks are accepted,
but at a lower rate than higher-level talks.

Code on the Beach leaders and volunteers do not dictate what the content of the conference should be
apart from the description above. If asked what topics we would prefer, we will not answer decisively.
We rely on the community to come up with interesting topics that the community would enjoy.

The session length is a full 60 minutes, so please plan your session accordingly.

Selection Process

Our selection process falls into four categories of speakers: featured speakers (limited to 3),
invited speakers, the CFP pool, and wildcard opportunity speakers.

The first two categories, featured and invited speakers, usually do not go through our public CFP
process. These are speakers that either have such a high profile that they do not often submit to
public CFPs, or have spoken at Code on the Beach in the past and were preselected, or were recommended
to us from the community as speakers that they would like to hear from. It is possible that we could
select someone from the CFP pool to be a featured speaker, though. Regardless, we still apply our
anti-discrimination policy (see below) to the selection process of invited speakers, and we still
require that they submit high quality sessions for approval.

We will guarantee that at least 50% of our speaker slots available will be filled by our public
CFP process. Our selection process for the public CFP is done privately within our team, however
we apply an anti-discrimination policy (see below) and will often seek input from our volunteers
and other community members.

The wildcard opportunity category of speakers will fill at least 10% of our speaker
slots. This gives speakers that do not have much speaking or professional experience the opportunity
to speak at our world-class conference, which is a great launch point into future conference speaking
opportunities. So if you have never spoken at a conference before, or do not have much work experience,
or are a student, please submit to our CFP if you’re interested, as this category of speakers may give
you the opportunity that would be difficult otherwise to achieve!

Please note that, with the exception of the wildcard category, we do not hold all CFP submissions until
the close date. If your proposal is very strong, you may be selected as a speaker before the CFP close date.
This means that it is possible we could run out of speaker slots by the CFP close date, so submit as early
as you can.

Points of Consideration

We will take into consideration the following: quality of proposed session(s), education, work experience
including years of experience and current/past employers (in a positive way only), conference speaking
history, social media engagement (i.e. number of twitter followers), quality of blog post content, etc.

At Code on the Beach, we value diversity in our speaker roster to be a role model to the community and a
driving force in providing opportunities to everyone.

Code of Conduct / Anti-Discrimination Policy

Code on the Beach has a strong Code of Conduct that prohibits discrimination based on gender, sexual
orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, or religion. We apply this principle
to our selection process as well. We will never discriminate when inviting or selecting a speaker based
on gender, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, or religion. We
also require our speakers to adhere to this Code of Conduct in both their actions and the content of their sessions.

Provisions

If selected as a speaker, we will provide you with the following:

Free admission to Code on the Beach 2018 including all attendee benefits and meals ($399 value). This includes:

Please note that, apart from featured speakers in some cases, to keep ticket prices low we will NOT provide speakers with any of the following:

Travel accomodations or reimbursement

Hotel stay

Payment for speaking

Meals not provided to attendees (i.e. dinner)

Meals for your spouse or children (spouse/child meal plans are available for purchase)

Child care (Sea Turtle Kids Club available select hours for a fee)

Assumption of risk in an invitation letter to foreign governments

Tips

For the best chance at being selected, please keep the following in mind:

Come up with a clever title, and a 3-4 sentence abstract clearly outlining your session's contents. One-sentence abstracts will likely be rejected.

Keep the target audience of primarily developers in mind.

Modern and interesting topics will be more likely to be selected.

If you feel you would like to provide references of your speaking credentials, please have them email info@codeonthebeach.com before the selection process has closed. Please note that references are not required.

Make sure your title and abstract adhere to our Code of Conduct and do not contain any discriminatory or sexualized language.

Your photo is not used in the selection process, but if you are selected, that will be the photo we use for the website. Please submit a high-resolution photo at least 500x500px in size.